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Wednesday started early enough with Amy and me boarding a regional train for the two hour ride through the rolling southern Bavarian countryside down to the scenic town of Füssen where we would then catch a connecting bus and horse drawn buggy up to Castle Neuschwanstein. Neuschwanstein is allegedly the castle after which Disney modeled his castles during the 1950s and is the most visited but most unauthentic castle visited by foreign tourists (especially Americans and Japanese) in all of Germany. It's got everything an American or Japanese could ever want: pristine white stone walls, quaint little towers, a gazillion rooms (most of which were never finished) and a single resident whose life and death are shrouded in mystery. On the little horse buggy ride up to a neighboring castle, there was a gaggle of Japanese girls sitting next to Amy and me who all freaked out when I asked them if I should take their picture for them in Japanese. They informed me they were on vacation from Osaka and trying to see as much as Europe in 10 days, just like Amy and I were doing! They were also shocked to find out that I live in Tokushima, which is just as strange to them as an American running across a Japanese somewhere random in Africa saying that they live in rural Oklahoma. Cross cultural freak-outs aside, Amy and I went up to our little castle, wandered around through the inside of the mountain perched monster on a guided tour, then descended back into the surrounding snow covered valley for a little stroll through the town of Füssen. Füssen is yet another quaint example of a cute, clean little German town with cobblestone streets and intricately painted building facades everywhere. Along our little walk we stumbled upon a specialty bakery shop where we bought these really tasty cinnamon chocolate pastry balls. A "pastry ball" might not sound very appetizing, but it was all the pastry scraps left over during that day's cooking rolled into a softball size blob and then cooked in cinnamon and coated with delicious chocolate! Yummy!!! After eating our treat Amy and I walked around a little more and then caught the train back up to Munich and returned to Gesine's apartment where she was still rolling around in her own juices sick in bed. Poor girl. She had taken the time off of work expecting to be able to do some local travelling with me and Amy, but instead she wound up sick! But we did manage to make the most of a not-so-ideal situation and stayed home and ordered in dinner every night we were there. :-) As I shall always maintain: it's not where you're at, it's whom you're with that counts! And in this case I was having a great time!
We all slept in Thursday morning and lounged around Gesine's apartment until the afternoon shooting the breeze and chit chatting about anything and everything. That afternoon Amy and I took the S-Bahn (subway) into downtown Munich to go on a little walk around the city in hopes of watching the dancing Glockenspiel cookoo (sp?!?) clock at 4 p.m. (which didn't dance at 4 p.m. for some reason!) as well as got some medicine for Gesine, who was still basting in her own juices at home sick in bed. One of the more impressive sights/sites in Munich is the Frauen Kirche (Church of Our Lady) right downtown which is a huge, beautiful brick structure with two tall stone towers capped by two giant onion domes. When I first came to Munich back in 1994 I really didn't like the church since I had considered it "too eastern European" because of its onion domes, but now I find them very beautiful and I really like the church. We continued our walk around Munich, nearly freezing off all our limbs along the way and then ducked inside this huge café near the Glockenspiel and had a little bit of coffee and warmed up in preparation of our trip back to Gesine's apartment. Once chez Gesine, we had a nice little ordered-in Pizza dinner and kept the evening very low-key and spent the rest of the evening relaxing and talking and having a good time. :-)
Friday started relatively early as Amy and I had a rather busy schedule for that day. We got up early (7:00 a.m. on a vacation day!) and were packed up and out of Gesine's apartment by 8:30. This time it was a bit sad saying good-bye to Gesine since, as opposed to when we parted ways in Berlin 10 days before we knew we'd see each other in a week and a half, this time around it would probably be quite a bit of time before we saw each other again, not to mention that departures are never fun anyways. But I'm sure Gesine and I shall see one another again soon enough, be it in Europe or America or somewhere else! By 9:30 AmyLynn and I were on a highspeed German train (in first class no less!) speeding down the rails toward my old university town of Tübingen in the southwestern state of Baden-Würtemberg. We arrived around 12 p.m. and went on a turbo tour through die Altstadt (the Olde Towne) past the Schtiftskirche (church), the Rathaus (Town Hall) and up to the Schloß (shlohss = castle) which has been totally renovated on the inside and turned into a university building. We then walked around the narrow streets of downtown and stopped in for lunch at Die Krumme Brücke (The Crooked Bridge) restaurant where I had worked during 1995 as a busboy earning $12 an hour! (which at the ripe old age of 20 was quite impressive, I thought!). The place was under new ownership and the food was not as good as what they used to serve, but I was still happy to be having regional Schwäbish fare and be back in home territory! After lunch Amy and I walked through the part of town largely dominated by university buildings and I reminisced about my days studying in Tübingen. I was surprised though at how much construction was underway and how many new buildings were being built - not all of which appearing to fit very well into the general surroundings either! Amy and I then took the Number 2 bus up to Waldhäuser Ost (Forest Houses East) where I and my fellow DirdieBirdies lived for a year. And in case anyone is wondering, the DirdyBirdies is the group of American friends I lived with/hung out with in 1994/1995 including two additional inductees - one is the wife of one of the original DirdyBirdies and was studying in Denmark and northern Germany at the time and the other is a good friend of mine who came to visit back for New Year's 1995 and both were instantly granted membership for obvious reasons! Also, since we are all still in contact with one another in this group, they may be very interested to know the most recent updates on Waldhäuser Ost (and the rest of you will probably be bored out of your brain by the following section, so you can skip it!).
Amy and I were finally let into my, Sean and Johanna's wing of the building after I buzzed and buzzed and two American guys from Oregon let us in. I walked around and noticed that the bathroom and shower area is just as nasty as when we were there and surprisingly enough, the kitchen area is being prepped for yet another make over. I don't get it, they build the place in the mid 1970s, don't renovate the kitchens until only one month before we leave, and then they renovate it again now five years later??? Despite the renovation, that Biomüll nightmare is still rotting on the balcony and all that trennbares Müll is still in a pile in the hallway next to the kitchen door. The more things change, the more they stay the same&ldots; Also, we were informed by the Oregonians that someone had jumped off the 15th floor balcony the year before and that the typical trend of wintertime student suicide was still in full swing. But after hearing that I felt like saying, "Hey, that story sounds suspiciously similar to the one I was told about the student who flung himself off the 15th floor the year before we got there. Hmmm&ldots; Maybe it was all just lore? But I did tell them about the alcoholic epileptic who was found dead on Joel's floor (the 10th or the 9th floor?) the year I was there just to freak 'em out. ;-} [End W.H.O. review!] After taking a stroll down memory lane, Amy and I put on our walking shoes and trekked out toward the picturesque little monestary town of Bebenhausen a couple kilometers to the north. Along the entire walk I recounted the scores of memories from that road, like the time the DirdyBirdies tried to teach newly indicted member Aungela how to drive a manual transmission car at midnight in the snow! Then I told the story about all of us going snow sledding down the hill next to Bebenhausen and how Sean and I rolled down that rocky cliff which we could not see under the snow and Sean nearly dislocated his shoulder! And I was reminded of when half the DirdyBirdies went sunbathing nude on the hill overlooking Bebenhausen. I think that was the time those Turkish guys offered to buy AmyE. away from Sean! The forest was a tad bit different though this time around since der Sturm des Jahrhunderts (storm of the century) plowed through the area two weeks before and a serious portion of the trees in the forest had been uprooted and lay on their sides covering all the roads and pathways with their branches. Plus, the hillside overlooking Bebenhausen was a soggy, squishy mess that was hard to navigate through. Nevertheless the place is still there and just as quaint as ever and it was great to see it all again! AmyLynn and I walked around Bebenhausen taking a couple pictures of the monastery and cute houses all around then caught a taxi and raced back into Tübingen (literally, the taxi diver was a psycho!) and hopped on our connecting train up to the city/town of Ludwigsburg (where Crazy Ludwig's old palace is located) and were greeted by Andrea Ostberg, who has been my pen-pal and friend since October 1989! She and her family were nice enough to invite Amy and me to stay with them Friday night in their house in the little town of Freiberg am Neckar. It was great to see the Ostberg family again after 5 years and I was shocked to see how much her younger brother has grown since then! The night we got in we had a nice meal prepared by Andrea's mother and afterwards Andrea, Amy and I got all gussied up and went out to a dance club in Ludwigsburg called the Rockfabrik (the Rock Factory). It's actually a really big place and for the most part was populated by the same sort of people you might find in such an establishment in Butte County (for anyone with insider knowledge of Butte County that is&ldots;), the only difference being the Gothic Room in the back of the place which was packed full of every scary looking German you could imagine! But since I find this sort of environment rather fascinating - although I don't necessarily fit in - I was having a good time watching it all. One thing that Amy noticed, to the credit of the German people, was how non-confrontational everyone was and how well the group seemed to get along. Case in point, in America if you have a large building full of goths, white trash, head-bangers, preppies, academics, freaks and geeks, there's bound to be some serious trouble. However, the Germans by and large just go about their own business and give everyone their own space to dance and drink and do whatever else it is people do at such places. And I think that's pretty cool. We stayed out pretty late and if I remember correctly we didn't return home until around 4 in the morning, and it goes without saying that we all crashed for the night as soon as we laid eyes on our beds! |
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January 2000, Füssen and Schloßneuschwanstein
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January 2000, Relaxing around Munich
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January 2000, Tübingen, Bebenhausen and Freiberg am Neckar
W.H.O.
update: if you remember where the bridge was connecting WHO and the
little shopping center across the street is, well, on the hilly WHO
side of that bridge there are two new smallish obnoxiously typically
"nicht passend" blue and gray student housing buildings now
standing where there used to be grassy knolls. These new buildings
now make the entire area even uglier than it was when we were there
back in 1994/1995! The elevators inside Fichtenweg 15 are still as
sha'nasty as ever, and every bit of graffiti that was in them back
then is still there now! I went up to the 11th floor to see if I
could break into the communal area by just pulling the door open
(which used to be the normal way of getting into our floor) but it
seems like they replaced the lock and finally secured the hallway.
The main entry room/elevator room is still dark and scary, but WHO
just wouldn't be WHO without dark and scary rooms everywhere.